If you’re a member of the Authors Guild (and if you’re a writer you should be) you’ve already received this news as the first story in the July 31st newsletter, but just in case:

Click through here or the image above to read the whole piece but here’s the heart of it:

What Happens Next

With final judgment entered, the settlement moves into its distribution phase. Payments to authors will proceed under the court-approved Plan of Allocation, with valid claimants receiving a pro rata per-work share divided among copyright owners according to elected default splits (available for non-education works) or the percentages set by their publishing contracts. A court-appointed Special Master, Theodore K. Cheng, will resolve any disputes among claimants over a given work, with submissions—including publishing agreements—kept confidential and under seal. Notably, class counsel committed to receiving their fees in step with monies paid out to class members, not merely paid into the fund, and the parties must file a post-distribution accounting addressing any concerns raised by class members during administration.

This settlement resolves only claims about Anthropic’s past conduct in acquiring and copying pirated books. It sets no ceiling on what authors can pursue going forward—against Anthropic for any future conduct or output-based claims, or in the many other pending cases against AI companies that trained on authors’ works without permission or payment. What it does establish, resoundingly, is that downloading authors’ books from pirate websites at an industrial scale carries a hefty price tag.

(Emphasis mine.)

Long story short, the judge has signed off on the settlement and that was the last step before the payout begins. Caveat lector as with all things publishing, aka wait until you see actual dollars drop into your bank account before you do a little dance.

That said, I must admit that whoever built the settlement website (and so long as its search function was accurate) made it very easy indeed to find titles that Anthropic had scraped and made the process to claim titles pretty straightforward. Since I am my only staff member here at Dana Stabenow & Co., I would like to extend my gratitude to them as well as to the Authors Guild for holding all those AI feet to the fire.

Join the Authors Guild here.

#thiswritinglife Chatter An AI pays up Anthropic settlement I do own my books after all